WCCUSD hosts recruitment fair to find teachers

El Cerrito vice principals Jay Elvrin (left) and Eric Mapes (right) chat during a break between interviews.

The fair, the first of several this year, attracted over 50 applicants in three hours. Most arrived early, though some filtered in steadily until the event ended at noon. A team of administrators worked to smoothly guide people through the application process, from registration—more than half had appointments, many walked in—to finding the right interviewer among a maze of wooden desks.

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Kennedy High art teacher finalist for The Ed Fund

kennedy high art steve mainini

Dozens of palm-sized faces hang from the ceiling in Steve Mainini’s art classroom at Kennedy High School. The ceramic reflections of former students dangle in wire cages and defy gravity as if trapped in some sort of bad dream. But for the hundreds of students that have enrolled in Mainini’s art classes the past eight…

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Richmond, meet your new basketball team

Fourteen-year-old Abdul Black loves basketball, but he’s not worried about the NBA lockout. He’s following a different league this season, and he’s already got a favorite player. “I’m here to see ‘Little Pat,” he says, pointing toward a group of young men gathering at the bar at the Boiler House Restaurant Tuesday night. You can’t…

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Kennedy alums show support for film

The screening of a documentary about the 1984 Kennedy High-El Cerrito football title game wasn’t supposed to be a Kennedy event, but it just about turned into one, said producer Jeff Patterson. Before the movie started at the Richmond Civic Center on Saturday night, a throng of former Eagles circulated the lobby sharing stories of…

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Film documents football season when Kennedy was king

Jeff Patterson was in Hawaii when he found out that his alma mater, Kennedy High, beat El Cerrito in the 1984 North Coast Section championship football game. Patterson graduated the year before and was in the army. He said he was a broadcaster in high school and didn’t play on the team. Still, the win…

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